Canada Beams Up More Interstellar Star Trek Postage!

A quick update, just in case you were in cryogenic suspension: last year (2016) was the 50th anniversary of Star Trek. You might just have missed the massive conventions featuring top-line guests who had never done the Star Trek convention circuit before. You might just have missed the glut of cool merchandise, mammoth Blu-Ray releases, and the latest movie in the franchise.

You might also have missed some stamps. The U.S. Postal Service graced the anniversary with a set of stamps that seemed to be trying to pay homage to the colorful ‘60s origins of Star Trek rather than to its beloved characters. They were…abstract…to say the least. Now Canada’s stamps? Canada had the best Star Trek postage stamps – basically, they had the stamps I wished we had gotten in the States.

If you’re wondering about the unusual spread of characters covered on the sheet of five Canadian Star Trek postage stamps from 2016, bear in mind that three of the five actors – William Shatner, James Doohan, and John Colicos – were born in Canada! Non-Canadian-born Leonard Nimoy and DeForest Kelley were included because, well, there would’ve been riots in the streets if Spock and Bones had been left off of the 50th anniversary stamp set.

Canada Post apparently knows when it’s got a very happy customer base, because it has just announced “Star Trek: Year 2” stamp sets, this time concentrating on the five TV captains that the franchise has put on our screens so far: Kirk, Picard, Sisko, Janeway, and Archer. (Sorry, no Chris Pine, modern Trek movie fans.)

The new set of stamps is being offered in every form from a lavish booklet, to first-day covers, to framed sheets.

The best part of all? Canada Post does ship to the United States, quite happily.

As we’re all waiting for a new Star Trek series (to be filmed, incidentally, in Canada) that seems like it might fade into vaporware in an alien atmosphere, Canada Post is keeping fans happy by not limiting the celebration to 2016. (And the 2016 stamp sets are still available.)